Yes, we have entered the territory of 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Windup Girl, Brave New World, A ClockworkOrange, and especially, Fahrenheit 451—every dystopian future you have read about and feared.

Donald J. Trump’s hysteria over reality became eminently clear at the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) in Kansas City, Missouri on Tuesday, July 24, 2018: “Stick with us. Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news,” said Trump to an applauding audience who appeared to be under mass hypnosis. While some may dismiss his words as just one more attack on the free press, remember, that is where dictatorships begin.

The ever more likely illegitimate president Trump followed up his stunning performance in Kansas on Twitter with these chilling, already disproven lies: “Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they [Russians] will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!” Stunned silence.

Only a week earlier, on a stage in Helsinki, Finland, Vladimir Putin, President of Russia and murderous dictator, said he did, in fact, want Trump to win our presidential election in response to a reporter’s question. We all witnessed it. Putin went on to state that he did order his military to help make that happen. The world saw and heard all of this with our eyes and ears.

Then Trump launched his next attack on reality a few days later and said, “don’t believe your eyes and ears,” as if he is the Wizard of Oz after the curtain has been pulled back. Of course, Trump is the Wizard of Oz without a heart, without a conscience, with knowledge or understanding of history. Trump is only the petty, mean little man as trickster willing to deal in lies and bluster from the most dangerous and powerful stage with nuclear weaponry. There are even witches in his narratives and a witch hunt (the Mueller investigation of his and his campaign’s collusion with Russia in the interference of our presidential election).

Trump has shown quite a bold and dangerous strategy if you are willing to consider schizophrenia as logic. This seeming president has floated the idea that if he pushes this particular lie, it will make it easier for him to claim victory no matter the outcome of the mid-term elections. He will simply state (repeating the lie he has already set up) that Russia helped the Democrats to illegitimate victories. Trump’s entire series of statements is projection, of course, as that is exactly what happened to land us in this nightmare in the Trumpian dystopian universe.

What then? If Trump declares the mid-term elections illegitimate, will he reverse the election results? Will he declare himself the King of America? Will he have secret agreements with Putin? (Oh, that’s right. He already has done this.) Will he have his political rivals actually imprisoned and not simply repeat the third-world dictator mantra, “Lock her up?”

At this point and after the events of the past two years with Trump dominating the national stage, it is in the interest of every American to fight back in ways they have never had to consider before to defend our own democracy. This is not a Republican vs. Democratic rivalry but an annihilating and dystopian universe vs. our world as we try to hold on to sanity, decency, democracy, and reality.

Stand up. Speak out. Vote. Protect the voting rights of others. Drive people to the polls. Campaign and canvas for a Democrat. Push back against the lies. Yes, we did see you, Donald J. Trump, with our own eyes and heard you with our own ears, and you are, indeed, a traitor.